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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24531256">Only the Dead (But Not the Resurrected)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkcorvids/pseuds/cybercrow'>cybercrow (clockworkcorvids)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>robowhump 30 day challenge [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Deus Ex (Video Games), Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>30 Day RoboWhump Prompt Challenge, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Aug Incident, Augmentations (Deus Ex), Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Body Dysphoria, Body Horror, Body Image, Caffeine Addiction, Canon-Typical Violence, Cybernetics, EMP, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Graphic Description of Corpses, Hacking, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, Multi, Near Death Experiences, Nightmares, Non-Consensual Body Modification, One Shot Collection, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Panchaea, Prosthesis, Team as Family, Trans Character, Trans Francis Pritchard, Trans Male Character, Transgender Francis Pritchard, Transhumanism, Whump, adam jensen is grade a Dumb Of Ass, bodily autonomy and all that jazz, no beta we die like men, psychological whump, self projection at its finest, team sarif banter, transgender character, which is unfortunately</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 09:49:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>10,479</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24531256</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkcorvids/pseuds/cybercrow</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Part 2 of the 30 Day RoboWhump challenge, which has taken me a lot longer than 30 days. Each chapter has individual tags and warnings, so you can pick and choose what you want to read. Gratuitous Adam whump. More tags and description to be added as more is written.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Adam Jensen &amp; Faridah Malik, Adam Jensen &amp; Faridah Malik &amp; Francis Pritchard, Adam Jensen &amp; Francis Pritchard, Adam Jensen &amp; Vaclav Koller, Faridah Malik &amp; Francis Pritchard, Ivan Berk &amp; Vaclav Koller</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>robowhump 30 day challenge [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1766944</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>38</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. 17. Painful Repairs</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>check out the <a href="https://discord.com/invite/kKnKQXR">church of the machine god discord server</a>, where we scream about every single deus ex game and also frequently make shitposts</p><p><i>"only the dead have seen the end of war" -unknown, commonly attributed to plato</i><br/> <br/>if you're here from the first half of the robowhump challenge, you share a very specific overlap in tastes with me and i commend you for it, or maybe you're just dedicated to seeing me whump every single fictional roboboy i hyperfixate on, in which case i also commend you</p><p>if you're here from somewhere else, probably the dx tags, hi! your faves are about to get <i>hurt!</i> no guarantee of sufficient comfort, although i usually try to slap a little teeny bit of fluff on the end of things for maximum emotional damage. </p><p>enjoy! &lt;3</p>
    </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>17/30, painful repairs </p><p>emp, gsw (gunshot wound), extremely questionable jerry-rigged hacking</p><p>francis &amp; adam, gen <s>with one singular innuendo</s></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Francis is trying, trying so damn hard not to think of it, but all his brain can do in his current state of shock is replay that same image, that same moment, just a split second, as the bullet hit Adam. </p><p>Adam’s dark form, silhouetted in searing bright light, as he turns, lets his guard down for one second too long. A blinding flash, a crackling, and then the telltale bitter taste of an EMP kicking in. That same light dancing across the planes of his cybernetic limbs as a small dot of red blinks over his torso, once, and then vanishes, replaced by a spurt of blood, darkness spreading across darkness, Adam’s back arching. A glare flashing across his shades, eyes unreadable through the tinted lenses. A hand coming up to his chest as he stumbles, and coming away wet with blood that is visible even against the surface of his mechanical fingers. He falls, and is fully bathed in dim light, particles of dust collecting in the air around him at the disturbance his body makes as it hits the floor. Blood smearing against the ground as Francis drags him out of the sniper’s line of sight, behind cover. Clothing being ripped away from skin, that clothing saturated with blood and skin stained with the same.</p><p>“Hold still!” </p><p>Pale organic hands, turned red by blood, flash across the reflective black polymer of synthetic limbs. One presses down, hard, against a bruised and bloody expanse of skin, the other frantically restraining the erratic jerks of a too-strong cybernetic limb. Shoulder muscles both organic and biological flex beneath Francis’ hand as Adam turns onto one side, baring the full extent of his injuries to Francis. The EMP had taken out all of Adam’s systems, shutting down his augs just in time for a bullet to hit him. A shot to the heart, that must have been the intended target, but it missed, hitting the Sentinel instead. It has to have been the Sentinel, otherwise Adam’s wounds would be healing right now. And one, maybe more, of the connections between his arm - on the same side that the bullet hit, the left - and his torso are severed, causing the jerking that is currently the bane of Francis’ existence. </p><p>“Adam, I implore you to hold still, this is life or <em> death </em>, and I cannot fix any of the myriad problems you’ve got going on right now if you don’t hold still so I can work!” </p><p>Adam’s only response is to moan, a sound which is unfortunately of the pained nature and not something else, as an apparently involuntary shudder runs through his upper body. He isn’t entirely unresponsive, but he also isn’t about to help Francis out by holding still. Francis’ augs, too, are offline, but his are lesser, less <em> integral </em> to his very existence. He’s thinking, fast as he always is, and thinking that he could hack into Adam’s systems, if his augs come back online, but no, he can’t, not if Adam’s are offline too. It’d be the very definition of futile, one empty vessel bumping against another in some vast abyss, waves around them, nobody there to throw a line between the two. All useless. The all-too-familiar sensation of panic, unable to be dulled by emergency meds that Francis doesn’t have on hand right now, rises in the tech’s chest, and he lets the sensation of shaking and pulling and clenching take over his lungs, if only so it doesn’t overcome his hands. He can do without full lung capacity, something years of binding and smoking have taken away from him, but he cannot do without his hands being steady. <em> Adam </em> cannot do without Francis’ hands being steady. </p><p>And his brain, his brain is running at a million miles per hour. Assessing the damage, trying to figure out what to do and in what order, formulating contingency plans, pushing away the very present mental static coming from his own augs being offline. He doesn’t need his augs to make a good list. All the wounds, namely the bruising on the left side of his torso, are either staying the same or getting worse, Adam’s self-healing barely starting to attack them - really, it looks more like the way a playful cat bats at someone than any sort of real onslaught. Arm short-circuiting, needs to be removed. Augs still mostly, if not entirely, offline. He needs power. Energy. Biocells. </p><p>That’s not enough. </p><p>Fuck. </p><p>Can he even <em> see? </em> </p><p><em> Apply pressure to a gunshot wound. Do not attempt to remove the bullet </em>. </p><p>Francis, once again, doesn’t need his augs, doesn’t need access to the Internet or any databases, to remember that. He applies pressure. He applies <em> less </em> pressure, when Adam’s arm, out of the man’s control, jerks violently and meets Francis’ own arms, thin and scrawny and, for lack of a better word, <em> squishy </em>compared to him. That’s going to leave a bruise, but Francis doesn’t care. </p><p>“Hold - <em> fucking </em> - still!”</p><p>More blood is coming out of the bullet wound. </p><p>Adam’s lips part. A strangled cry. Blood, reflective wet red against dull pink. Another gasp, and he’s choking. Damage to his ribcage? How could one bullet do that much without hitting his lungs? Is there damage somewhere else? Francis isn’t a doctor, far from it. He doesn’t save lives, he ruins them. Always has, probably always will. How the hell did he wind up here, at <em> Adam Jensen </em>of all people’s side, taking a hit meant for Adam, and now with Adam’s life in his hands?</p><p>Then, static. Crackling. Stronger, louder than before. He can’t push it to the back of his mind this time, and it makes him clench his teeth in pain and agitation and something else, but he realizes it means his augs are restarting. Good. That’s good. Maybe Adam’s are too. Maybe he has a chance. </p><p><em>There! </em> Francis’ neural augs are booting up, too damn <em> slow </em> , but they’re coming online again, and there’s his InfoLink - he tries to make a connection with Adam’s, but nothing happens, the other man’s own InfoLink must be off. His hacking augs come online, too, though, and...well...he <em> does </em> have schematics of Adam’s limbs. But even if he can hack them, as some power returns to Adam’s augs, and shut off Adam’s errant arm, which he can do in <em> theory </em> , but theory is different than reality - even if he <em> can </em> , he can’t perform surgery to remove a fucking <em> bullet </em> from the man’s chest. He can reroute power from Adam’s limbs to the Sentinel, maybe, if there’s enough of it, or he can reroute power from <em> himself </em>, but that’s more likely to fry both of their augs than do anything else. </p><p>He gives up, says <em> fuck it </em> to himself, applies more pressure to the wound, and initiates a hack into Adam’s systems. It’s surprisingly easy, maybe because Francis has the schematics or maybe because he’s good at what he does. Regardless of the reason, it’s a blessing, and he takes it. Beggars can’t be choosers and all that crap. The arm is shut off quickly, and then, hells, it’s not like he has a <em> better </em> option. The other arm goes too, and both legs, and a whole bunch of nonessential augs that Francis skims over as he diverts all power - there’s hardly any, but it’s slowly trickling back in - to the Sentinel. </p><p>He holds in a breath. Lets it out, shakily. Watches his hands shake. Watches power begin to come back to Adam’s augmentations. </p><p>The bruises begin to change color, lightening, hopefully a reflection of Adam’s internal organs. All they can do is keep holding on - literally - and wait. </p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. 18. Programming Override</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>18/30, programming override</p><p>gen, malik's pov, malik &amp; pritchard &amp; jensen </p><p>mostly banter and a little bit of that classic hero complex, not super whumpy</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>malik and pritchard friendship is underrated and it gives me so much serotonin</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>"Oh, yeah," he's saying as Malik comes into earshot, entering his office for the second time in as many hours, "because </span>
  <em>
    <span>that's </span>
  </em>
  <span>going to help us </span>
  <em>
    <span>soooooo </span>
  </em>
  <span>much" - he draws out the </span>
  <em>
    <span>so</span>
  </em>
  <span>, in a manner Malik thinks is rather immature, but also endearing. It's uniquely </span>
  <em>
    <span>Francis</span>
  </em>
  <span>, being a dickhead but also being lovable in that very specific way he does it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A pause. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You really think that's going to get you out of there? And not, I don't know, killed in a slow and gruesome manner?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She pokes her head into his office as he pauses to breathe in between his ranting. "I take it you've established contact with Adam again?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Francis' head snaps up like a rubber band, hair following and then flopping back down around his shoulders. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Wh - oh, Malik. Yes, yes, I have. He's being a fool, as usual." </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Malik purses her lips, noting the slight tremor in her hands, invisible beneath her gloves. She always worries about Adam when he goes off on whatever ops he's been assigned, just a little bit, despite herself, but she had been more worried than usual after Francis had stalked into the otherwise empty cafeteria at some ungodly hour, making no attempt whatsoever to hide the fact that he was hacking the vending machine for a Cyberboost energy drink that he probably only needed if he was </span>
  <em>
    <span>really</span>
  </em>
  <span> exhausting his neural augs, and then promptly stalked back out, muttering under his breath the entire time. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>This was not unusual for him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>What was unusual was the fact that he hadn't even bothered to stop and say hello to Malik, let alone notice her presence.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So she finished her own drink, coffee that definitely didn’t have a shot of liquor in it, and made a beeline for the head of cybersecurity’s office. The overhead lights were off, as they usually were, but the light from Francis’ various computers was more than enough to compensate, and had the added bonus of emphasizing his eternally present dark circles and worse-than-usual scowl.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’d shaken him until some answers had fallen out, and it had been like shaking a tree to get a lost Frisbee out, except the figurative Frisbee had smacked her in the head and left a nasty bump. It isn’t a new story - Adam goes on some special ops mission, Francis is supposed to be checking in on him via InfoLink, they lose contact, Francis has a nervous breakdown and overdoses on caffeine, what happens after that is always variable - but it’s one that always hurts, every single time it plays out. Malik knows this scenario well enough that she marched right into Francis’ office, slapped a massive mug emblazoned with the Sarif Industries logo onto his desk, and said “It’s water, drink it” in a tone so authoritative that Francis, like one of Pavlov’s dogs, more or less subconsciously complied.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>What she’d found was that Francis was desperately trying to regain contact with Adam, who was simply not responding to any of the pings to his InfoLink, and whose vital signals indicated some form of distress. She’d gone back to the cafeteria to down another coffee - fuck it, this one </span>
  <em>
    <span>did </span>
  </em>
  <span>have liquor in it - turned the empty mug in her hands until she memorized every little chip and scratch and imperfection in its surface, tapped her feet a bit for good measure, mentally reviewed some obscure emergency landing scenario for VTOL that she had never had to use, and tried to push all thoughts of being worried about Adam from her mind despite the fact that they were permeating through the layers of her brain and into the deepest crevices of thought she had. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>At some point, she made the slow and slightly unsteady trek back to Pritchard’s office, and this is where she now finds herself, walking the tightrope of anxiety, leaning over the back of the tech’s chair - it’s a testament to his current mental state that he doesn’t even bother to make a snarky comment about it, just sighing and accepting Malik’s intrusion into his personal space without even a facade of resistance. She can only hear Francis’ side of the current conversation, courtesy of the InfoLink, but that’s more than enough to explain the rapidly increasing levels of cortisol in the room, no fancy augmentations necessary to notice those. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Whoa, whoa, hold up, Jensen, Jensen - </span>
  <em>
    <span>Adam </span>
  </em>
  <span>- don’t tell me you’re going to - </span>
  <em>
    <span>no - </span>
  </em>
  <span>you </span>
  <em>
    <span>idiot! </span>
  </em>
  <span>You’re going to get yourself killed!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What else is new?” Malik mutters, and Francis shoots a glance at her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, fine, what do you </span>
  <em>
    <span>expect </span>
  </em>
  <span>me to do?” he grumbles, seemingly at nothing in particular. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He says hi, Faridah,” Francis says, directed at Malik. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, hi, Adam,” she replies. “What stupid shit did you do this time?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Francis’ scowl deepens. “He says he has it under control.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Like hell he does.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, you - the fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>alarm </span>
  </em>
  <span>systems? Are you </span>
  <em>
    <span>kidding </span>
  </em>
  <span>me?” Francis buries his head in his hands. Faridah smirks, and pats him on the head, to which he responds with a noise akin to a feral hiss, but not much else. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Malik, this moron is hiding in the vents of a goddamn skyscraper because he couldn’t get his clumsy ass to the intel he needed to recover without setting off every fucking alarm in the place. And - </span>
  <em>
    <span>and</span>
  </em>
  <span> - it gets </span>
  <em>
    <span>worse </span>
  </em>
  <span>- he has to get out of there without being seen or engaging in any </span>
  <em>
    <span>lethal activities</span>
  </em>
  <span>, which means he needs to override all the alarm systems.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Malik blinks. Takes a moment to process this. Swallows the growing lump in her throat, only for the pulsating sensation of dread to land in her chest and tighten up everything around it. She knows what Pritchard is thinking right now, that Adam can hack, his augmentations make it possible, but he doesn’t know his way around computers - hardware or software - anywhere near as well as Francis.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You can do it for him, can’t you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of </span>
  <em>
    <span>course </span>
  </em>
  <span>I can,” Francis responds, no hesitation whatsoever, “if only he’d stop being a stubborn bastard. And besides, he </span>
  <em>
    <span>should</span>
  </em>
  <span> learn how to stop relying on me every time he experiences a mild inconvenience, but he doesn’t know the difference between that and a problem he actually needs me to solve.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They both know he doesn’t really mean anything, behind the surface-level annoyance. They both say nothing of it.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s a long pause, no doubt as Francis listens to whatever Adam is saying on the other end. Then he opens his mouth, taking in a breath, formulating a reply: “I </span>
  <em>
    <span>know</span>
  </em>
  <span> you want to prove you can fend for yourself when it comes to hacking, but - Jensen? </span>
  <em>
    <span>Jensen?</span>
  </em>
  <span> Shit, shit, fuck, he’s not responding, his line went dark, Jensen, you </span>
  <em>
    <span>idiot, </span>
  </em>
  <span>don’t tell me you - ”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His mouth remains hanging open like that for a good few seconds. Malik watches it, all coherent thought lost to the ringing in her ears, the newfound sensation of the very foundations of the ground she walks upon being pulled out from under her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her hand is on Francis’ shoulder, clenching tightly; </span>
  <em>
    <span>fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span>, his muscles are tense, so are hers, her knuckles are white, all the blood in her body has begun to pump faster and faster. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He’ll be fine,” she says, if only to convince herself of it. “He always is.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Francis’ chair swivels around at maximum speed, dislodging Malik’s hand, causing her to step back. His face is manic, pained, every single word there is that means </span>
  <em>
    <span>freaking the fuck out</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But he </span>
  <em>
    <span>isn’t</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Faridah! Sure, he usually comes back in one piece, but do you really think for a second that he’s fine up there?” Two spindly fingers reach up to tap the side of his skull.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She hesitates. “No,” is the simple response she comes up with after a moment’s pause. “But none of us are. And...we watch out for each other. All of us.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The chair turns around, again, slower this time. Elbows hit the desk, and Faridah’s hand finds Francis’ shoulder again. Reassurance; grounding. They both need it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re right,” Francis says quietly, almost softly, the sort of vulnerability he rarely exercises around Malik, and even more rarely around nearly anyone else. He clenches his fists, flexes his hands, cracks one knuckle at a time. “I can get access to the security systems at Adam’s location fairly easily,” he says as he begins to type, hands flashing across the backlit neon of his keyboard with speed and ease that almost hides his anxiety by giving it an outlet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s just - ” a series of keybinds, complicated shortcuts. The thought of learning them makes Faridah shudder. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just a matter of - ” a pause, an angry hiss, and then another jab at the problem “ - getting through the firewall without causing even more to lock down in there, and then resetting the alarms. Turn off the cameras while I’m at it, unlock some doors that weren’t open before...and for the record, Malik? He told me to let him try this one himself, but I know for a fact that he’d just get an armed security patrol on his ass if he tried to hack any of of these locks. I’m saving all of us a hell of a lot of time and an even worse headache doing this.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well, as much as Malik understands the need for some level of self-sufficiency in the field, he isn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>wrong</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Spyboy, for all the classic Sarif-Industries-golden tricks up his overpriced leather sleeves, doesn’t know everything, and there’s a reason Adam has a handler.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What, you gonna teach him how to hack to make up for it? Maybe make one of those cute little kids’ programming books, dubious legality edition?” It’s a tone shift, a joke such as this, but that’s the kind of thing they’re both used to, because it’s the kind of thing they </span>
  <em>
    <span>do</span>
  </em>
  <span> in times when the stress gets to be too much, just so they can smile through the pain. Just so they have a little control over their suffering.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe I will,” Francis mutters absentmindedly, fingers still flying over his keyboard. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Malik smiles at that, slight and quick, letting it fade away lest Francis notice it and complain that her friendship is making him too soft. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She watches him work for a while, occasionally making noises of distress and annoyance and, finally, sitting back with a great exhalation of breath as he clenches a fist in something between relief and pride. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I just made some security guard’s life a living hell,” he mutters, and Malik thinks something along the lines of </span>
  <em>
    <span>when don’t you?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“And?” </span>
  <em>
    <span>Adam?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Adam’s life is hopefully about to get a lot easier. Although, I am still keeping as much of an eye on him as I can, given that he won’t fuckign </span>
  <em>
    <span>answer </span>
  </em>
  <span>my InfoLink pings and he’s keeping away from all the cameras.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Anything I can do?” Faridah asks, shifting so she’s leaning all her weight against the back of Pritchard’s chair, elbows crossed over one of his shoulders. He used to tense up when she did that, and he still flinches a little, but he relaxes more quickly now. Sure, their friendship is making him a little soft, but who said anything about it being too much - or, for that matter, it being a </span>
  <em>
    <span>bad</span>
  </em>
  <span> thing?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He hums, thinking. Stops typing for a moment to raise his almost-empty Cyberboost energy drink can to his lips. “Unless you’ve suddenly become even more of a cybersecurity expert than Adam thinks a basic hacking aug will make him, I don’t think so.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then take care of yourself, Pritchard, and don’t worry so much” she replies, clapping him on the shoulder again as she stands. “I’ll be around; let me know when you hear back from Adam.”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Not </span>
  <em>
    <span>if</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I will. And that goes for you too, Malik.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She knows they’re both going to worry anyways. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. 19. Limb Removal</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>19/30, limb removal </p><p>can be read as gen or shippy, francis &amp; adam, trans pritchard<br/>nightmare sequence including: body horror, me not so subtly hinting that i do not like david sarif, big tw for dysphoria talk, and the utter fucking trip that is a way-too-vivid stress dream</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>it was three days, right? i sure hope it was. </p><p>also, im posting this from mobile, so apologies if something got fucked up</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>It happens on the second night after Jensen’s InfoLink goes dark, after he disappears somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, something about a shipping container, and Francis doesn’t know if he’s dead or alive or </span>
  <em>
    <span>anything</span>
  </em>
  <span> at all. Even half the world away, the InfoLink is a steady line between them, and that line has now been completely severed by radio silence. He doesn’t sleep the first night - he can’t, not wired like this, every nerve lit up with the anxiety of </span>
  <em>
    <span>not knowing</span>
  </em>
  <span>. He stays awake until his hands shake and spectres flash in the corner of his vision on the rare occasion that he diverts his gaze from his computer screen. On the second night, though, he forces himself away from his chair at some unholy hour, if only because he knows, somewhere deep down, that it’s better to risk missing a transmission from Jensen and be somewhat alive the next day than to reach the microsleep stage of sleep deprivation. Besides, he’s already coded an override into his InfoLink and maximized the notification volume on all his computers - if a message from Jensen doesn’t wake him up, nothing short of the end of the world will. So he chews a sugary melatonin gummy that’s a stark contrast to the plain white caffeine pills he’s been taking as if they were candy, drags his weary body the few steps to the couch in his office, and collapses, his limbs shaking even as he falls into a restless sleep.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He doesn’t clock the moment when he slips away from the grasp of consciousness, possibly because he toes that line for a while, but it feels real. Vivid. It’s the kind of thing that, after the fact, he will struggle to separate from hazy, half-asleep memories, hence why he’s sleeping in the first place now. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He dreams that he is the surgeon, clothed in a monochromatic cap, mask, scrubs, gloves, reconstructing a skull and the things inside it, the details of which blur when he looks head-on at it, because he’s never actually seen the inside of Jensen’s cranium save for in files he wasn’t supposed to have access to. It’s a generic brain - most brains look more or less the same anyways, don’t they? Everything is stark, bright, glaring lights, but there is a vignette of shadow around the corners of his vision, funneling in on the surgical tools in his hand, the body lying prone before him. He is picking through innards. He is instructing others, copies of himself, as they carefully sever the connections between salvageable limbs and a mangled torso. He is poking and prodding at every single piece of Adam Jensen that has always been a piece of Adam Jensen, and a few that haven’t, pieces that are not yet fully integrated into the system that is the man’s body. Nobody knows if this will work. Nobody knows if Jensen’s body will reject the augmentations, not for </span>
  <em>
    <span>sure </span>
  </em>
  <span>- they know, in theory, on paper, from the research, and mostly from Sarif’s indisputable word, that there is something special about this man, but the nature of science experiments is that there are always unknown factors, negligible or not. Whether it be the vinegar in your paper-mache volcano soaking through the bottom of it because you didn’t seal it up well enough, or the body of your unwilling human test subject rejecting the military-grade augmentations you forced into him, one can never know for sure what will happen until after it happens. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He dreams that he is Sarif, far gone past the point at which he would care about the ethical repercussions of violating Jensen’s bodily autonomy in such a way, knowing full well that he doesn't need to lose those limbs or a lot of other things, knowing full well that he doesn't need CASIE or the Typhoon or the Icarus, knowing full well that he had no way of asking for this. His brain, despite what seems in his sleep state to be a perfectly logical train of thought, does not come up with any sort of explanation for Sarif’s behavior. There is no deep thought here, just a sense of dread, foreboding, suffering. It’s the feeling of walking through ruins before the dust has fully settled, smoke rising in the air around you, vultures circling overhead, and knowing that the vultures are the only friendly thing for miles around. They do not eat the living, only the dead. Bombs, storms, humans, not reading the fine print - all these things prey equally on both the living and the dead, with no regards as to the differences between the two. Any body is a commodity, alive or not. Adam Jensen is somewhere between life and death, the perfect prey. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He dreams that he is Adam, floating in and out of consciousness, in and out of life, almost beyond the brink. Almost lost, but not quite. He does not know, not in the slightest, what was going on in the man’s head between the moment he realized he’d walked into a trap and the moment he first saw augmented eyes in the mirror. He can imagine, though, and imagine he does. Pain, hazy agony, haziness induced both by Francis’ present state of mind and his active imagination. It feels so real, even though there will be no trace of it come the morning. He writhes under the restraints, he tastes copper and smoke and who knows what else; he lives out his brain’s best approximation of Adam Jensen’s personal hell one second at a time, with the knowledge of everything that comes after already deeply ingrained in his memory.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He dreams that he is himself, half a life younger, nineteen and angry, raging, in so much pain, taking dangerous hacking jobs without a second thought just because he needs the money for what his insurance won’t cover. This is the prelude to what he’ll later experience with Neuropozyne, but it’s the opposite. He is not adding something to his body, he is physically taking something away so he can live. He is the one on the surgeon’s table, again - twisted, distorted, </span>
  <em>
    <span>again</span>
  </em>
  <span> - his breasts with a mind of their own, cybernetic, he did not ask for them, he wants them gone, they will not leave, they are forced upon him, and everything is blurry, sharp edges, perception stretched out and biting, as his ribs break and press in on his lungs, becoming snaking metallic vines that strangle him while he watches, standing bare and naked and vulnerable and </span>
  <em>
    <span>unsafe </span>
  </em>
  <span>in front of the shattered mirror in Jensen’s apartment. His hair is long again, the way it was before he became comfortable with that, he is shaving his head again, his voice is shrill, too high, not his own again. He is not himself again, he is not </span>
  <em>
    <span>Francis</span>
  </em>
  <span>, he is not </span>
  <em>
    <span>he</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Francis is lost to some alternate universe where things went a little differently as the shape in the mirror melds into something long since left behind and a name that feels like a dirty word burns into freshly pierced ears. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Radio silence. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He is lost.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He is drifting.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Francis Wendell Pritchard awakens, jerkily drifting back into reality, into a world where nothing is certain, and there is still an emptiness where that certainty should be, not just an absence but a </span>
  <em>
    <span>thing</span>
  </em>
  <span>, a </span>
  <em>
    <span>presence</span>
  </em>
  <span>, that is shaped like the surface of the thing that is missing. He stumbles, half awake, into the nearest men’s room, and stares at himself in the mirror. For a moment, that familiar old sensation of impulsive, deep-set manic distress flashes across him, the knowledge that he could just shave all his hair off followed by a single certainty - that he is comfortable having long hair, at this point in his life, that he will not bow to what years of societal programming tell him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His knuckles are as white as the rim of the sink they grip as he glares into the mirror, slowly grounding himself in his body and his name and his very </span>
  <em>
    <span>reality</span>
  </em>
  <span>. It’s not a great reality, not perfect by any means, but it’s his, and he fought to get here, and he’ll keep fighting to stay here.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He clenches his eyes shut and hisses out a long breath between his teeth in the hopes that it’ll make things a little more clear. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>That’s the moment when his InfoLink lights up with a ping.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. 20. Vital Component Damage</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>20/30, vital component damage</p><p>just adam, reflecting on how his augmentations have changed the way he perceives the world</p><p>eyes aren't vital in the traditional sense, but i live to twist prompts</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>this one's on the shorter side, because i'm busy and stressed and have room for maybe half a braincell dedicated to fic today, so i just want to get it out there and move on to the next. i enjoyed writing it, though! c:</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Adam’s augmentations, like his biological human parts, are a system. They work in a specific way, and there’s a range outside of their usual conditions that they can adapt to work with, and sometimes they’re faulty, and they have to be maintained to stay in working order, and sometimes they break.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This time, it's his eyes that fail. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He hates them, in a way he doesn't hate or even remotely feel about any of his other augmentations, knowing what they've taken away from him. Yes, they’ve given him another chance, and that’s more than many people can say, but sometimes he thinks he’d rather be dead, or whatever shell of himself would have been with only the most </span>
  <em>
    <span>essential </span>
  </em>
  <span>augmentations installed. The eyes, they're inhuman; his vision, inhuman; his reality, augmented. He remembers devices and apps, first for cell phones but later for headsets, that promised to augment reality; technically, it's the same principle as his HUD. It's a big step down from virtual reality, but he still thinks, sometimes, that the way he perceives the world around him, in all senses - but especially in his vision - will never be the same as it used to be. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>(The way others perceive him will never be the same as it used to be.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It just happens when he's in his own apartment, testing things, and he runs the wrong code on his neural augs, but it still freaks him out, navigating such a familiar space in such an unfamiliar way, through a framework of perception that is foreign in more ways than one.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He startles himself, jolting from the position he’s taken on his couch, comfortable but probably not doing great things to his spine (not that that matters much, either, these days), when he tastes ozone and feels an electric crackle under his tongue. His eyelids twitch. His heartbeat speeds up. Everything goes black, followed by his HUD flickering and promptly vanishing as well. Two fingers prod at his cheekbones, and no, his shades are retracted. He blinks, touches his eyelids as gently as he can - that kind of fine motor control didn’t come easily to him for a long time after the accident, and he owes its redevelopment to the clocks that still lie around his apartment in various states of dis- and re-assembly. Sure, Adam panics for a moment, but it’s far from the worst technical malfunction he’s experienced with his augs, and there aren’t many places he could be that are safer than his apartment. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So he sits there. And he takes the opportunity to just...</span>
  <em>
    <span>feel</span>
  </em>
  <span>. To let it sink in, not being able to see even with his eyes wide open. One hand finds the closest armrest of his couch and grips it, and he realizes, that’s different too. He could take away all the little parts, one by one, and he might be left with nothing, or close to nothing. (What’s the difference?) He’d be like the test subject in that one urban legend he remembers hearing years ago, some horror story about a man who had all his sensory organs...removed, or just disconnected from his brain, maybe - Adam doesn’t remember the details, but he </span>
  <em>
    <span>does</span>
  </em>
  <span> remember that this proverbial guy was slowly driven insane by the hell of being trapped inside his own body in the most literal sense, and regardless of whether the story was real or not, it still sits with him, and uncomfortably so. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s a strange kind of peace in this, though, weary and dreamlike. It’s almost like meditation as he jerks to his feet, swaying for the briefest of moments. His augmentations, combined with the way he knows his apartment even better than the back of his polymer hands, make it easy to navigate without sight.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And of course, he can't experience touch, not the same way anymore, so he finds himself just standing there. Pressing synthetic fingertips against mundane objects, against cracks, imperfections in the coffee table, windowpane, the wall. Trying to feel. He wants to cry, knowing how much hes lost but also how lucky he is, but he can’t with his eyes like this, and not even properly if his eyes </span>
  <em>
    <span>were </span>
  </em>
  <span>functional. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adam opens a window, and stays there, hands lingering on the sill, gripping the wood as tightly as he can without leaving a mark in the hope that it’ll somehow bring back the full sensation of touch that he’s beginning to forget. And he turns his face upward, relishing the cold breeze tickling his skin - his </span>
  <em>
    <span>real</span>
  </em>
  <span> skin, he thinks, his </span>
  <em>
    <span>human </span>
  </em>
  <span>skin, and then takes it back, because it’s unfair to him and every other augmented person to insinuate that augmentations are somehow less than real, less than human. Still, the fresh air feels all but divine against what’s left of his biological skin, that which he was born with. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>feels</span>
  </em>
  <span> it, and he stands there for so long, he doesn’t bother to keep track of time in the first place, really. He loses track of how long he stays there, with no reality to see and nothing augmented on top of that reality to see either.  Eventually, though, he relents to the reluctant knowledge that he has to move on with his day - really, with his whole life - and he boots up his retinal prostheses again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The world he sees is bright and detailed and real, but as the golden tones of his HUD flicker back into existence over his field of vision, he gets the feeling that they might never feel like a true part of him.</span>
</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. 21. Mind Control</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>21/30, mind control</p><p>panchaea and the aug incident, but adam gets a little extra suffering this time<br/>adam and francis, gen <s>but if you have shipper goggles like i do it's kinda gay</s></p><p>graphic(ish) depictions of violence, hallucinations, if you've played the panchaea level you know what you're in for</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>panchaea fuckt me up so bad yall</p><p>posted unedited because my allergies are really bad rn and id rather post slightly sleep deprived than under the influence of benadryl</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>There’s a short period of time, one which slips by like sand through outstretched fingers, between when Adam gets the upgraded biochip and when he regrets it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s relief, a breath of fresh air, coming up from underwater, lungs aching for release, when the new chip syncs with the rest of his augs and he finds that not only are the glitches gone, but things are clearer, less hazy, less murky. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He doesn’t need to know Francis as well as he does, or even process the words out of the other man’s mouth, to recognize the suspicion in his voice when Adam brings up the topic of the biochip. Adam already knows Francis won’t be getting it, not in this world or any other, not unless he’s backed into a corner and forced into it, and even then he’d probably try to fight his way out. Adam is not the same as Francis, though, even with how much he’s come to rely on - and even, though he certainly won’t say it, trust - the other man. He needs to be at peak performance as he moves on from Hengsha, coming to the crux of his mission, and he can’t risk a glitch disabling him at a critical moment, even if the upgrade itself is suspicious. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So he gets the biochip, and he doesn’t look back, and he keeps clawing his way towards his goal, ever closer, ever more elusive.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>On the rocket, ascending, ascending and then coming back down from the edge of space, the force of gravity pushing Adam back into his seat, pressing down against his lungs and his ribcage and his synthetic heart and his entire body, pulling him back towards the Earth, that from which he came, is so strong that he thinks nothing of the glitches in his vision.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then the rocket crashes, blazing fire and fury, and he stumbles out of the ruins, crawls towards the docks, and he just...he collapses. The hot sun beats down on him; the frigid air whips around him; the icy water, brought down below its normal freezing point by the salt in it, bites at his augmented legs. Debris rains down around him, and then it stops, and at some point he makes it all the way onto the docks. His movements are jerky. His senses fluctuate between too weak and too sharp, making it near impossible to focus on anything. All the motion around him, </span>
  <em>
    <span>of</span>
  </em>
  <span> him, is alternating between too slow and too fast. The burning debris he passes through, the frozen wind, he feels it all far too strongly, far too much. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s just a side effect of the crash, he tells himself, even as his self-healing does its job like clockwork and the feelings don’t go away. He’s here. He’s right outside Panchaea. He’s made it almost all the way to the end.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He makes it inside, somehow, and amongst the debris and empty hallways, bloody handprints on the walls and smoke filling the air, it’s warm, almost suffocating. Adam stands in the entryway, and in the moment that he takes to consider his options, his InfoLink pings, startling him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jensen!” There comes the sound of an achingly familiar voice, and he wants to slump against a wall in something that might be relief, or just exhaustion. He stays standing anyways. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“For once,” Adam says, breaking off to cough in the moment between when smoke starts to fill his lungs and when his rebreather kicks in, “I’m actually happy to hear your voice, Pritchard.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Francis doesn’t comment on it, just scoffs slightly and moves on. It’s so </span>
  <em>
    <span>typical</span>
  </em>
  <span> of him, so </span>
  <em>
    <span>normal</span>
  </em>
  <span> that it makes Adam violently wish, for a moment, that he were back in his office in Detroit, when his biggest problems were just that - </span>
  <em>
    <span>his</span>
  </em>
  <span>, not the world’s. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Part of me thought that rocket crash killed you, but somehow I’m not surprised you crawled out of there in one piece.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t count it as a win yet.” One hand finds the nearest wall, and he lets himself lean on it. A moment of reprieval. The floor sways under him. “This is far from over.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll be there as long as I can,” Francis replies, and the lack of sarcasm, vitriol, passion, </span>
  <em>
    <span>anything</span>
  </em>
  <span> at all in his voice startles Adam. He sounds downright somber. Maybe it’s just the static from how bad the InfoLink connection is here. Maybe Adam is just hearing things. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thanks. I - ”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Whatever he was going to say, he never gets it out, because he looks up, down the hallway ahead of him, and a tall figure is standing right there. Dark, angular, cast in shadow, firelight flickering over sharp edges. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m right here, Adam,” Francis says, and..</span>
  <em>
    <span>what?</span>
  </em>
  <span> He never calls Adam by his first name, and his voice sounds warped, transparent, if a voice can even do such a thing, like it’s in a dream. Like when Adam tries to replay the words in his head, he can’t find them, they aren’t there. Francis is, though. He’s here. So close Adam could reach out and - and he does - and - and - </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Pain is not a sufficient word to describe the feeling Adam endures immediately after he has this thought. No, this is pure suffering, agony ripping through his skull, screaming and tearing. He wanted to be in control of himself, at Panchaea more than ever, and he still does, but he is so far away from any semblance of it as he hunches over, clutching his head in both hands, and he screams so hard it seems like his lungs are trying to come out of his mouth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jensen?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The figure is closer. Too close. It doesn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>look</span>
  </em>
  <span> like Pritchard, he swears, it looks like a shadow that could maybe belong to Pritchard, his head hurts too much to look directly at it, but it has to be him. It has to. Adam can’t let him get closer, no, not when he’s not in control, he doesn’t know that this is even Pritchard, and now he - he remembers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The biochip. The glitches. Francis had said he planned to look into it more before making a decision, but they both know he’d already made the decision that those glitches were a small price to pay for the security of knowing exactly what was in his head. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adam made a mistake.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He shouldn’t have gotten the upgraded biochip. In hindsight, it makes perfect sense - the glitches would incite people to take the perceived path of least resistance to fix their problem, without a thought to future consequences. Millions had trusted it, and so had he, up until this very moment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jensen?” the voice - </span>
  <em>
    <span>a</span>
  </em>
  <span> voice - says again, and he can’t tell if it’s actually Pritchard or just whatever approximation his own brain had contrived. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He can’t trust anything now, not even his own mind, nor his body, so he forces himself to his feet, and he tenses every single muscle he can as if that’ll stop the pain (it doesn’t), and he runs for his life.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Mercurial</span>
  </em>
  <span> is the word that surfaces in the mirror shards of his coherent thought: quick, like the planet and the god; volatile and fluid, like the element. He stumbles, past the shadowy figure or maybe through it, the voices around him screaming all the while. He feels nothing against his skin, but flickers, ghosts, brush by Adam’s body as he keeps going, deeper into Panchaea, towards an unknown destination, not trying to go anywhere so much as to get away from the strange creature with Francis’ - his coworker’s - his </span>
  <em>
    <span>friend’s</span>
  </em>
  <span> voice and silhouette.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Everything is spinning, turning, warping as he comes around a corner, hand grasping for the nearest wall again, and gravity wins its battle against him, pulling him down, down, down. He’s on his knees, and someone is yelling, maybe multiple people. All he can make out is his own name, over and over again; Jensen, Jensen, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Jensen</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and eventually that, too, blurs into Adam, Adam, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Adam</span>
  </em>
  <span>. He yells back. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shut up! Make it stop! Make it fucking stop!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s backing into a corner, or at least he </span>
  <em>
    <span>thinks </span>
  </em>
  <span>he is. He doesn’t know. That figure is appearing in his vision again. Flames lick at everything around him. Of all the shit he’s been through, is this going to be what kills him? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Suddenly, he realizes that he doesn’t know, not with any certainty, what’s real. Not what he’s seeing. Not what he’s hearing. Certainly not what he’s touching. He could - </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Whatever he was going to think, he doesn’t get to it, because he feels - and by god, he </span>
  <em>
    <span>really</span>
  </em>
  <span> hopes this is real - electricity sparking up and down his spine, a slight airy tingle, nothing painful, and then a jerk of sharp pain at the base of his skull. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And his vision clears. There’s smoke all around him. The fire is real. He’s backed into a corner, still in one of the hallways of Panchaea, and he’s not sure which, but that’s mostly just because they all look the same. He tastes copper - he must have bit his tongue in the panic - but the Sentinel is already closing the wounds to his tongue. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His fingers dig into the wall. They’re going to leave indentations. He doesn’t care. It’s real. </span>
  <em>
    <span>He’s</span>
  </em>
  <span> real. All of this is real.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Unless - </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Adam?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The voice is torn by pain, softened by fear. And it’s familiar. Clear, or at least as clear as it can be.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Adam curses, his throat hoarse from all the screaming. “I was hallucinating. The - the biochip. You were - ”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I remotely hacked into it and dampened the signal.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I - I was - </span>
  <em>
    <span>fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span>, the screaming, and I couldn’t see anything. I thought you were there, and then you were gone, and - ” He cuts himself off, having lost his train of thought yet again. There’s a silence between them, and then a deep, familiar sigh. When Francis speaks again, somehow he doesn’t sound resentful, just...resigned, in a weary sort of way that dulls his sharp edges.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m right here, Adam.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>All the way to the end of the line.</span>
</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. 22. Memory Loss</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>22/30, memory loss</p><p>gen, adam, post-panchaea near death experiences</p><p>second person! because that's a thing i'm doing now, apparently</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>hi i wrote this at 1am and it shows</p><p>fun fact! the whole thing about getting cold enough that your bodily functions slow down and you dont die when you otherwise might is something that actually happens and is very interesting and you can find more about it <a href="https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/treatment-tests-and-therapies/therapeutic-hypothermia-after-cardiac-arrest">here</a>!<br/>also feel free to talk to me about wood frogs because i <i>am</i> from new england and i am very well acquainted with our favorite little superhero froggy bois</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>After the collapse, there’s a storm. It rages across the Arctic, and you aren’t thinking - at least, not on a conscious level - because your brain, meters beneath the surface of the ocean, ever so cold, isn’t in the right sort of shape to be doing any of that sort of thing right now. Conscious thought. Supplying the right amount of oxygen to the right parts of the body at the right time. Not being damaged. All the usual. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>If you were thinking, though, you’d be thinking about how funny it is, and that’s not quite the right word here, but the English language doesn’t particularly care about being literal all the time, so you’d be thinking about how funny it is that storms always rage. They </span>
  <em>
    <span>storm</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Nobody ever talks about a storm being gentle, because that isn’t in its nature. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>If you were thinking, though, you’d think about how you don’t remember whether anyone talked about you being gentle, or if you, too, simply raged. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Were you a storm? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>You will think about this later, when your limp ragdoll of a body finally washes ashore and you lie there like a corpse that isn’t decaying because living things are not supposed to decay. (You’ve escaped the horrors of necrosis, thankfully.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You think, then, cold sand and pebbles pressing against the jagged metal of what’s left of your body armor, that you could have been a storm at one point. This sort of armor, it’s sharp, it’s meant to protect, but it’s hurting you, and if you’re being protected then maybe you were hurting other people. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>You decide that you no longer wish to be a storm. You wish to be the sky and sea as they are in this moment, meeting in a distant place on the horizon that you, lying flat on your back, cannot see without painfully craning your neck. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>You wish to be the calm, not before the storm, not in the eye of the storm, but after the storm has passed. You wish to be the aftermath, the rubble, the things that are left not-quite-intact in the wake of a rage.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe you already are that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After the storm passes, your body is numbed by the cold. You might have died, if not for this little fluke of nature, comparable to the way the wood frog freezes itself to live through cold New England winters. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>You aren’t from New England. At least, you don’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>think</span>
  </em>
  <span> you are. It just doesn’t seem right, but you swear you remember learning this, so someone else must have told you, someone who </span>
  <em>
    <span>is</span>
  </em>
  <span> (was?) from there. You also remember learning about cryogenics, cardiac arrest, miracle revivals of people whose bodies became cold enough that their journey to death’s door was made in slow motion.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You…well, as you think about it more, you still have plenty of your memories. They’re there, beneath the rippling surface of your mind, right in the cold salty water, if you just get up and throw yourself back in, or maybe wade in if you’re feeling particularly like prolonging your suffering. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>You continue to lie there, and let your memories stay where they are. You don’t need them right now. Maybe you do. You probably </span>
  <em>
    <span>will</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Rephrase it, then: you don’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>want</span>
  </em>
  <span> them right now. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Your body is still cold, even though you’re out of the water. So cold. It’s warming up, though, slowly, so you shift back into the tides, not enough to drag your body out to sea again, but enough to keep you as you are: cold, numb, calm. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They find you like that, ice floating around your face, which is beyond reddened, beyond blue, is simply pale and coated with frost, devoid of color. And they keep you cold, all the way to the labs. You’re resurrected again. You’ve done this before, and you can dip your toes into the memories now, without the risk of slipping in and drowning, so you do. This is not your second chance at life, but your third - depending on how you view some of your closer shaves over the years, the number could be even higher. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They warm you up, eventually, bring your core temperature back to thirty-seven degrees Celsius. On the way, you go through all the stages of hypothermia in reverse. You start to shiver as your body wakes back up. Your fingers don’t hurt the same way you remember them hurting as a kid narrowly avoiding frostbite, and not for the first time, you’re thankful for your augmentations. Even though you would likely have survived the cold with a fully organic body, you might not have ever made it to the surface of the ocean to begin with were that the case. You probably would have lost limbs when they warmed you up. And you try not to dwell on the past so much anymore, not that you particularly feel like warming up those memories right now, so you’re just grateful you’re alive and (mostly) functional.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The first time you sleep without the imminent danger of slipping away, you see her. You dream of her. You </span>
  <em>
    <span>remember</span>
  </em>
  <span> her. She is purple, and this is odd, because not much else is purple in this world. You think you remember flags with purple stripes, but right now, </span>
  <em>
    <span>she </span>
  </em>
  <span>fills your vision. She is special, and you realize that this is a memory playing out as the words on her lips come out of the speakers around you, and they feel like puzzle pieces fitting into place, one at a time, deja vu over and over again, because you have already lived this.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You have a hard time forming memories after the collapse. The timeline has more holes in it than Swiss cheese, and you only recall these snapshots. The rest of the memories come back in due time, though, once you’ve been declared stable enough to be out of the ICU. Part of you wishes they hadn’t, that you could stay in that moment at the edge of the ocean forever, not recalling if you were a storm or not. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>You’ve figured it out, though. People called you a storm. Sometimes, you were. And now, you don’t want to be.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>oh, to be a frog. just vibing.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. 23. Objectification</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>23/30, objectification</p><p>václav &amp; adam('s detached limbs), gen</p><p>body horror, (somewhat) graphic depiction of corpses</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>fair warning, this is my first time writing václav and i haven't actually played md yet. i hope my characterization is passable anyways B)</p><p>happy <i>aug</i>ust!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>When you work with body parts, organic or aug, you’ve got to be good at the whole compartmentalization thing. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Yes</span>
  </em>
  <span>, this thing used to be part of someone’s body, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>yes</span>
  </em>
  <span>, maybe it isn’t so ethically sourced, but Václav reminds himself that he’s doing good things, even if he has to send a few more emails than he would have liked complaining about the </span>
  <em>
    <span>organics</span>
  </em>
  <span> attached to some of his refurbished parts. Corpses are objects. They are shells inside which nothing living resides, unless you count the bacteria and - depending on how well preserved the body is - possibly maggots. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Parts</span>
  </em>
  <span> of bodies, specifically the fleshy ones, are basically the same as parts of corpses once you take away a consistent source of blood flow. Augs, now those are a little different, because you can treat them as part of a body or you can treat them as an object or you can treat them as both at the same time - really, there are plenty of options, depending on your moral code. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>As for Václav? He chooses to treat them as he might treat the parts of a computer. Respectably, because regardless of origin they’re going to be a piece of someone’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>living</span>
  </em>
  <span> body, but with the knowledge that they can be configured and customized and upgraded like RAM or a GPU. Too slow? Starting to break down? Not trendy anymore? Not a problem - if you can afford the upgrades, let alone the nupoz. Of course, that’s not as much of a </span>
  <em>
    <span>thing</span>
  </em>
  <span> now, after the Aug Incident, but Václav’s point still stands.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Oh, and there’s another parallel between computer parts and augs, which is that Václav has a near-encyclopedic memory of them, down to the ridiculous nomenclature that’s full of more acronyms than any government could hope for. He can work with almost anything, out of a combination of intuition and the fact that he’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>seen</span>
  </em>
  <span> almost every sort of aug there is to see, and he recognizes all the mainstream companies’ parts. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even when those parts are one-of-a-kind - wait, no, scratch that. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Especially</span>
  </em>
  <span> when those parts are one-of-a-kind.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sure, the arms and legs are fairly standard. Highest quality, the most expensive ones Sarif has on the shelf, some experimental alloy going on that looks like it was probably custom. Not the most common thing, for sure, but Sarif has plenty of rich friends and customers and those for whom the line between those two things is blurry. It’s not that far out of the ordinary, and he tells himself that everything is fine, even though there’s...well, a more than ideal amount of </span>
  <em>
    <span>organics</span>
  </em>
  <span> attached to the limbs. The augmented sockets for the legs are missing, thank fuck, but the arms look like they’ve been ripped straight from their biological sockets, connectors severed along with what was no doubt already-damaged nerves and flesh. </span>
</p><p><span>It’s </span><em><span>not</span></em> <em><span>that far out of the ordinary</span></em><span>. </span></p><p>
  <span>He grits his teeth and breathes in and out to the tune of that sentence, ingraining it into his very movements as if that will make it more true.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ordinary people, Václav thinks, don’t just walk around with military-grade nanoblades implanted in their arms. Ordinary people don’t have parts of the highly experimental, expensive, made by special order only Icarus Landing System integrated into their augs, even if said augs are high-end. Ordinary people don’t have the whole fucking Sarif Industries catalog surgically attached to whatever’s left of their original bodies - it can’t be much for whoever these augs came from - and ordinary people </span>
  <em>
    <span>certainly</span>
  </em>
  <span> don’t have the back room VIP specials.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He could make a killing selling these parts off, or better yet, reverse engineering them and entrusting the schematics to the highest bidder. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>could</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but he’s not going to. He wants to get rid of them as quickly as possible, that’s for sure - that being said, though, there’s no way in </span>
  <em>
    <span>hell</span>
  </em>
  <span> he’s using these for a patient or four.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>These augs stand out more than a sore thumb, or, for that matter, any metaphor Václav could think of - in </span>
  <em>
    <span>any</span>
  </em>
  <span> language. This is shark fin soup waiting to happen, but unlike a fin, these augs can be neatly reattached to their original owner, and, well...how hard can it be to track that person down?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>To be fair, these augs </span>
  <em>
    <span>are</span>
  </em>
  <span> quite a bit out of the ordinary after all.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>don't worry, i swear adam is alive and bitchin'</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. 24. Altered Pain Sensors</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>24/30, altered pain sensors. sequel to part 23 because drake won't let me live</p><p>warning for a very brief mention of noncon. nothing actually happens. other than that, same warnings as the last chapter. some handwavy shit regarding how his augs are constructed.<br/>adam and vaclav, gen. ivan is there too.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>They couldn’t take </span>
  <em>
    <span>everything </span>
  </em>
  <span>out, not without killing him - and that hadn’t been their goal. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shark fin soup: the shark usually dies, but the hunters don’t go to the effort to put it out of its misery once it’s shedding blood in the water. They throw it back in, and leave its fate up to chance.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Said fate was probably death, anyways, unless someone came along and decided to help the shark out. And, well, this was no </span>
  <em>
    <span>A Dolphin Tale. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Morgan Freeman wasn’t here to dispense his infinite wisdom. Adam was a finless shark slowly bleeding out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well, he wasn’t even really bleeding. So he was probably more likely to die of starvation at this point, since he couldn’t move. Why hadn’t they at least taken his energy converter? Most likely, they hadn’t known he had one, hadn’t bothered to check, had been more concerned with getting the big, obvious pieces and then getting the hell out before he figured out some ingenious way to kill them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Whatever they’d done to detach his limbs, it had been clean by aug harvester standards - they’d gotten him from behind, so he hadn’t seen his arms pop out of their sockets until the limbs were falling to the ground, hadn’t seen his legs at </span>
  <em>
    <span>all</span>
  </em>
  <span> because they’d grabbed him by the back of the neck and shoved him down before ripping straight down the seam of his pants with some kind of blade. He’d been paralyzed by terror for a split second, the most terrible and primal sort of fear, but luckily, he’d been wrong in his first assumption. His legs were wrenched painfully out of their augmented sockets, and he’d simultaneously been glad for and annoyed with the ease of removing the limbs. He’d also gotten a lovely taste of cement.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Now he’s in a dark alley, which is the kind of tragically cliche thing he’s long since gotten used to, and part of him wishes he </span>
  <em>
    <span>were </span>
  </em>
  <span>bleeding, because then at least he’d have something to look forward to. Now, he’s just looking at a cement wall, memorizing every little bit of grime, watching the occasional insect crawl across its expanse, and wondering why they didn’t take his optical augs. They probably hadn’t been professionals, and he’d had his shades on, anyways, so it wasn’t like they’d even </span>
  <em>
    <span>seen</span>
  </em>
  <span> his eyes, although a little deduction might have done the trick. It had been a quick hit-and-run. They snatched the first things they’d seen, and made haste without checking for anything else. The only extra thing his assailants had taken the time to do is to disable his InfoLink.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The situation is far from ideal, but part of Adam is just glad they didn’t take his Typhoon - or, for that matter, any of his </span>
  <em>
    <span>special</span>
  </em>
  <span> augmentations. Even now, two years out from the Aug Incident, he can practically hear Sarif chiding him in that self-assured, vaguely condescending way of his. He doesn’t need to appease Sarif anymore, long after he stopped </span>
  <em>
    <span>wanting</span>
  </em>
  <span> to. But Adam has a moral code, alright? - and that moral code is currently blaring mental sirens at him, telling him that if his augs wind up in the wrong hands, it could cause so much damage, the kind which he once would have been legally responsible for and now would feel </span>
  <em>
    <span>morally </span>
  </em>
  <span>responsible for.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s kind of getting bored, sitting here. (Is he even really sitting? How far does that definition stretch?) Can’t call anyone, can’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>move</span>
  </em>
  <span>, can’t do </span>
  <em>
    <span>anything</span>
  </em>
  <span> but lean against the wall like a very strange paperweight, trench coat horribly dirtied and loosely wrapped around his shoulders. Adam’s pants are somewhere in the vicinity, not that they’re </span>
  <em>
    <span>useful</span>
  </em>
  <span>, although it would be nice to have his wallet on hand in case any unsavory guards come knocking. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Oh. Right. He doesn’t even </span>
  <em>
    <span>have</span>
  </em>
  <span> hands. So much for that. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>If someone unfriendly comes along, he’ll just...figure out a way to use the Typhoon without his limbs. It might kill him, but he’s low on options. If someone friendly comes along, good, he can hitch a ride. If nobody comes along…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well, the Icarus </span>
  <em>
    <span>does</span>
  </em>
  <span> rely on his hands for stabilization and balance, but he can probably use it without. And, to be fair, while his shoulders are most definitely </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> intact, his hips still are, since the sockets his actual limbs snap into are the part that’s surgically attached to his flesh. He could do a little crawl. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The thought is equal parts terrifying and hilarious. On one hand, it’s a funny image, but on the </span>
  <em>
    <span>other</span>
  </em>
  <span> hand, Adam is sort of in a life or death situation here. And okay, he’s used to that, and it doesn’t bother him more than usual, but that in itself is deeply concerning.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s been sitting there thinking about the pros and cons of just crawling to the nearest place he could safely contact Vega for at least twenty minutes when his InfoLink sparks. Someone is trying to contact him, and it’s not going well. He hears static, and the beginning of unidentifiable words before the attempt sends electric pain tearing through what feels like every nerve ending in his cranium. Thankfully, it’s short and not as intense as, say, getting Tazed or hit with an EMP grenade, but he’s still not a fan. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe someone’s coming for him? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s fifteen more minutes, and he counts one muttered second at a time until the numbers slur together on his tongue and in his mind, before another attempt. This one is even less successful, and part of him wants to try connecting on his end, but that can’t possibly end well, so he just sighs and lets it happen. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Another hour passes. He doesn’t count this, just looks back and forth between the clock and the </span>
  <em>
    <span>ERROR: INFOLINK OFFLINE</span>
  </em>
  <span> message on his steadily glitching HUD until he gets a headache. The whole time, he feels as if something is missing, just out of his reach. His Sentinel keeps warning him, every five minutes - like clockwork - that he’s losing bioenergy, but he feels fine. Okay, as </span>
  <em>
    <span>fine</span>
  </em>
  <span> as he can be with all four limbs missing, which isn’t exactly great, but his current pain levels are definitely not on par with what his Sentinel says they should be. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Something in his HUD is probably glitching. Maybe a broken connection where his InfoLink was all but destroyed. His Sentinel is </span>
  <em>
    <span>fine</span>
  </em>
  <span>, it must be.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Of all the times he’s thought he was going to die, this has got to be the most boring. So boring, in fact, that Adam is beginning to fall asleep when the sound of rushed footsteps rouses him. It’s too dark for him to recognize the person - no, </span>
  <em>
    <span>people</span>
  </em>
  <span>, there are two of them - through his shades, but by the time his vision has adjusted, they’re both standing over him and he can’t crane his neck to see their faces. One has visibly augmented legs, sort of like those many runners had decades ago but far more advanced, and the other is wearing dirty ripped jeans and what looks like it used to be a lab coat. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What are you - ”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s cut off by a harsh </span>
  <em>
    <span>Shhh!</span>
  </em>
  <span>, followed by words in a language he doesn’t understand - probably Czech. He doesn’t have to understand them to recognize the tone as one of someone cursing, though.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sorry,” a voice mumbles somewhere above him, “we’re here to help. We have to make this quick, Ivan.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adam realizes he’s starting to feel a little woozy, almost lightheaded, as the person with the augmented legs - Ivan, apparently - hoists him up. Perhaps his Sentinel </span>
  <em>
    <span>is</span>
  </em>
  <span> broken.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know who you are, but you must be important to have some of those augs that were installed in your arms.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They have his </span>
  <em>
    <span>arms</span>
  </em>
  <span>?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You - you have - ” evidently, he </span>
  <em>
    <span>is</span>
  </em>
  <span> weak, because he can’t finish the sentence before a wave of dizziness overtakes him. So much for being fine. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, long story,” not-Ivan says, head turning back and forth, gaze sweeping the area, and is that a </span>
  <em>
    <span>skull plate?</span>
  </em>
  <span> “I have all your limbs, super soldier. You’ll get ‘em back as soon as I’ve made sure you’re not gonna die on my operating table from some other untreated bullshit I missed.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adam pauses. He’s not sure what to make of this situation, to be honest, but then, he’s been in the middle of far worse before. Far weirder, too. He’s not in the clear yet, but he gets the feeling he’s in good hands. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay,” he manages. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He might as well just go along with it at this point.</span>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>it's kind of humorously unfortunate to me that adam doesn't get area damage like jc does. imagine him crawling around with one arm. imagine him trying to use the <i>typhoon</i> with one arm.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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